We too have had bad experiences with Lakeland Conservatories and I think C Wiener's advice to avoid them and all their associated companies, is very sound.

We had a conservatory built by them last year to replace a smaller ageing one. The quality of the samples they showed us was good as were their ideas for the design, but once we had signed and paid the deposit, things went downhill. They didn't do a proper survey, could not supply us (or the people doing the construction) with a plan of the conservatory, and it all seemed to be built ad hoc. The construction was a nightmare - their subcontractors worked for half a day, knocked down almost all the old conservatory but left the radiators and light fittings exposed to the elements, and then left us with the snow and rain coming in through the French doors into the sitting room. It was like that for 3 weeks despite numerous phone calls and emails to the company. We sent a registered delivery letter and they then arranged to send a different subcontractor. It did not go smoothly because the team to fit the new conservatory arrived before the site was ready for them, the units had been wrongly measured and did not fit, leaving us with a panel missing in the roof for almost 4 weeks. We became adept at fastening plastic sheets to try to keep the elements out. Then the floor was found to be so concave that it couldn't be tiled and Lakeland reluctantly came back and resurfaced it though leaving a far from perfect job - indeed we thought in general that the construction work was shoddy.

We sighed with relief when it was finished. Then we found that we had major leaks coming in where the conservatory joins the house plus leaks at the front corners of the conservatory - and some other less critical problems. The company has refused to return phone calls, answer emails or registered delivery letters despite it being less than a year since they built the thing. Clearly the company 10 year guarantee is worthless. We have now had to arrange for another company to come in and do repairs as the water was threatening to damage the fabric of the house.

We have taken advice which is that the company is in breach of its legal obligations, by not making any effort to put right an obviously defective product. Ideally we would like to get the money back that we have had to spend on repairs but most importantly we want to prevent others having a similar bad experience by using this company.